Saudi Gazette DUBAI — The most fundamental change that will occur in the world in the upcoming years is a massive digital transformation of every business, home, city and country that will cause a disruptive force. This was disclosed at the third Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF) hosted by Cisco in Dubai recently. The Internet of Things (IoT), linking smart objects and enabling an exchange of data in a network, is predicted to connect 50 billion devices by 2020. In the past 2 years, the annual IoTWF, first launched in Barcelona followed by Chicago, discussed the urgent need to embrace change and make the right transition in the digital world. "By 2020, 75 percent of businesses will become fully digital," said John Chambers, executive chairman at Cisco Systems. As the world faces a rising aging population, an urban boom, the need to feed the planet, and retooling the industry's carbon footprint, the main concern is how big are the problems that can be solved by IoT technology, aimed to improve the quality of life. However, Chambers says that only 30 percent of these digitization efforts will be successful because of failure to innovate and reinvent themselves as leaders. "During the past decade, most leaders understand this will be the most basic transformation regardless of their industry", he said. "And it will occur at tremendous speed as the world goes digital. The speed of innovation and growth will also result in dramatic disruption". Disruption is predicted to cause 40 percent of today's global major companies to cease existing "at a meaningful way" in the next decade. Today, only 7 percent of CEOs who think digitization is crucial actually have a digitization strategy. Chambers indicated that the economic benefit in 10 years will be the equivalent to $19 trillion in terms of profits and cost-savings. To catch up with the digital world, Global President of Smart and Connected Communities at Cisco Anil Menon said the biggest challenge is to change business models to adapt to consumers. A common set of standards is important to achieve. "Too often companies have been in silos," he explains. "That's why it's important to bring them together". Cyber security and hacking remains a pressing issue in networks. According to Vice President of Products and Solutions Marketing for Cisco Inbar Lasser-Raab, the solutions to obstacles today are network connectivity, fog computing, and extracting new value from data analysis in order to combat interoperability, manage security threats, and foster innovation. Menon further says "Design needs to be innovated. Developers become very important. In cities, urban services are becoming a global industry. They're the next generation of jobs. Smart ups have increased from 127 in 2013 to 1,500 by 2015". In addition, Chambers said one of the fundamental elements to a successful city or country is "the courage to change", exemplified in Dubai's efforts to become the "smartest city in the world" in a short period of time. Similarly, a number of cities have already adopted a single digital data platform in smart cities including, Kansas City, MO in the US, Adelaide in Australia, Hamburg, Germany and Bangalore in India. The event hosted over 1,500 government and business leaders who addressed common challenges and discussed opportunities to build an IoT ecosystem.
